60125 The settlement at Kyme has several features which are paralleled at Crowland and Bardney early monastic sites, which suggest that there was an early monastic site here too. These include a characteristic topographical setting, built on an island in the fen, and the same topographical relationship to Sleaford as Bardney does to Lincoln and Crowland does to Stamford. There are also indications that South Kyme was of pre-Christian ritual significance, with many finds of Bronze Age axes. South Kyme has a group of ancient churches, and six fragments of early medieval sculpture are built into the north wall of the present church, discovered during restoration work of 1888-90. The stones seem to have formed part of rectangular panels for a shrine-like casket, since each of them shows parts of the moulded framework which bounded a panel. It dates to the late eighth or ninth century, and an ecclesiastical object of this quality and function is most unlikely to be found outside a monastery of some status at this early date. This in itself has been taken as evidence for a pre-Viking monastery. The rights of the thirteenth century priory indicated that it had been a minster before the Conquest. {5}{8}{9}{10}